More on the diversity racket and the home loan debacle
Referencing my column yesterday on illegal immigration and the mortgage mess, Hans Bader at Open Market shares his experience. I’ve been getting a lot of e-mails with similar stories. Tip of the iceberg:
When I and my wife, a legal alien, bought our house, the mortgage company told me that if my wife were an illegal alien, rather than legal, we would have qualified for certain loan programs with big banks. But because she was a legal alien waiting for her green-card (which she had recently applied for), we didn’t qualify.
Mark Krikorian, an activist against illegal immigration, argues that “we’re in this mess, ultimately, because our political elites thought it was good social policy to encourage banks to give mortgages to uncreditworthy people, resulting in what Sailer months ago called the “Diversity Recession” (if this doesn’t work, make that the Diversity Depression). In other words, if poor people in general, or blacks or Hispanics in particular, were less likely to be approved for a mortgage, the only possible reason was racism or classism or whatever. Thus ‘creditworthiness’ was an illegitimate, dead-white-male concept, like middleclassness. Because, after all, isn’t everyone entitled to credit?”
Another strange lending practice also popped up when I purchased a home. I ultimately left my wife off the mortgage entirely, because I was told that since she had no credit history (despite being thrifty and having savings and no debts), putting her on the mortgage would actually get us a worse, higher interest rate than if I alone applied (I received a rate of 5%, a low rate by historical standards).
Why on Earth were we treated as worse off if my wife co-signed the loan, which makes no sense economically? It’s not like having her on the loan would have made me any poorer or less able to pay.
People I’ve talked to have theorized that it is a byproduct of two things: (a) discrimination lawsuits, and (b) courts’ indulgence towards junk science.
If the bank gave loans to white people like my wife with no credit, or bad credit, the bank would later look bad if was sued for discrimination, even if it was innocent. If a “fair-housing” group later sued the bank accusing it of discrimination, supported by a misleading “regression analysis” of the bank’s lending decisions, the bank could end up having to explain, at great expense, why it loaned money to my wife, but not to many minority borrowers who also had no credit or bad credit (never mind that my wife would have had a co-signor with good credit — me).
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Categories: Race Hustlers, Subprime crisis
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What is incredible to me is the Liberal Left screams because the world hates us…but the world hates us because of the views of the Liberal Left.
I think there is less to this than meets the eye. With no credit history, the wife is an unknown quantity, thereby increasing the risk.
The real question is, why is he *better* off leaving her off the agreement when (most likely) they had joint bank accounts etc? An unknown risk with access to this guys assets is just as big a risk on or off the paperwork, imao.
Alex
Co-prop, gopdepot
“You don’t have to like McCain in order to vote for him; in fact, it’s probably better you don’t - we are going to have to fight whoever wins for at least four years.”
The question is will they change their wicked ways? I highly doubt that they will. Political correctness for the sake of being all-inclusive has done much more harm than good. My husband was telling me that a co-worker of his stated that in Canada they don’t have affirmative action (they have a whole host of other problems but, AA isn’t one of them - kudos!). At any rate, he went on to say that there is no question that anyone in a position of authority got there based on their own abilities. No need to snicker or mumble incoherently about whether or not they are an AA beneficiary or not. He has a point.
This bailout, rescue plan, whatever, is proof-positive that “discrimination” is sometimes necessary. Leveling the playing field so that everyone benefits will be the straw that broke the camel’s back. Something about shared misery or such.
My sister used to sell real estate in Florida, and got out three years ago after realizing the whole industry was corrupt. Her brokers, HUD, and the buyers.
HUD in Jacksonville was so inept and corrupt they had to close it twice in one year and re-start it with new employees. She wrote the state Insurance Commissioner about illegal brokers she’d run into and got NO response. After a stream of watching illegals and people with absolutely NO credit buying houses SHE couldn’t afford, she left the business. She’d seen enough people being handed a down-payment check by the banks furnishing the mortgage, which they just endorsed and handed back, then watched as they were handed a brand-new social security card which they pocketed, she knew the house of cards was doomed to fail. Every broker she knew in Jacksonville is now broke as a result of this mess. She’s been out of the business over three years and is working at a full time job outside Florida, and doesn’t miss real estate at all.
Zogby just sent me a poll on “diversity”, some of the questions were:
1) Do you think our country is diverse enough? Yes.
2) Do you think we need to secure our border? Yes, (there wasn’t a HELL YES)
3) Do you think america should form a North American Union? NO.
4) Would you vote for a candidate who is a different race than you? Yes.
There were alot of other questions but it seemed like a strange poll. Did anyone else get this Zogby poll today?
Bradley
I’ve many friends in the real-estate business, and I can attest to your sister’s stories. I know of one mortgage broker who got out of the business in disgust, summer of 2007, he saw so many loans being written where brokers had knowingly falsified earnings. I also know brokers here who have been approached by assessors who were willing to assess houses over value. Hence the banks were upside down in the properties from the get-go. Greed has driven this debacle, from Wall Street right on down to Main Street.
Ann Coulter’s column deals with the same racket…and she places the blame solely on the Democrats…
“food-stamp-backed mortgages”
snork!
This is the same reasoning that if you don’t vote for Obama, you must be racist. It couldn’t be that you don’t like his ideas!! Heavens no!
Wow! No wonder the Dems don’t want to investigate what actually happened here. They already know and that’s why they are trying to blame Bush and Republicans. Obfuscation is their speciality.
IF we do the bailout, will the banks still be required to hand out loans to everyone to avoid government sanctions, lawsuits, etc.? Unless these requirements are removed, won’t we back in the same deep doodoo very soon?
The Dems have read the recent research that shows that the first impression in someone’s mind is awfully hard to change even with facts. By screaming that it is all the fault of the Republicans under Bush (and by insinuation McBush), they plant that image in the minds of the voting public. The MSM is in lockstep with them in this effort.
Once the truth starts to trickle out of how this extends back 20 years to legislation and regulation stemming from political pandering by the Dems and their unprincipled opposition to tighter regulation, the subject will be changed to how great the Dems are for saving the nation from another GREAT DEPRESSION.
No need for an October Surprise - the Dems got their winning issue just in time. All hail Obama!
#5 Madchef I received it last week. I think it has to with all of the racism comments being thrown around about Obamageddon. The left is already setting themselves up for a loss and the excuse will be racisim!
The CRA needs to be repealed or we will experience the same blood letting over and over!
[sigh] Unfortunately, I’m not at all surprised about all this…[sigh]
And, re:
Y’all may recall from basic statistics (eg. Stat 101 - or the like) that…
“Correlation does not imply CAUSATION, only ASSOCIATION”.
Using “statistics” to PROVE discrimination is a much more tenuous affair than the grievance mongers would likely admit.
On September 25th, 2008 at 11:56 am, xler8bmw said:
That was my guess as well. They will have the stats to claim Obambi’s loss on racism.
Thank Bush: http://www.vdare.com/mann/what_do.htm
Another Fraud Ring of Illegals and Legals
This is starting to sound like a bad SIT-COM… Imagine a Bunch of NEA school teachers standing around in the teacher’s lounge… They are scratching THEIR collective heads and wondering WHAT HAPPENED TO THE EDUCATION SYSTEM in this COUNTRY…Well, right at this moment we have a BUNCH of CONGRESSMEN and SENATORS, standing around scratching their heads… PRETTY FUNNY, HUH???
Mortgages for illegals was common practice in the Chicago burbs. I watched this happen during the 90’s. The banks felt that there was little risk.
This congress is pathetic. It’s time to start arrests for all those who created this mess.
Maybe if the politicians didnt spend so much time CAMPAIGNING and were actually doing the job we elected them to do….
Perhaps it should be mandatory that they be present in the U.S. Capitol/cast ALL votes and that they have to go on record on their EXACT position and explicitly state anything that might stand out as an exeception to why they voted that particular way.
And maybe we should require an explicit update into their voting record if they ever change their position in the future.
This way we can avoid any confusion like “I voted for it, before I voted against it”. Our answer to that should be ‘Well, Why??? Its not in your positional record….’
On September 25th, 2008 at 11:29 am, madchef said; yes I got the same poll from Zogby.I loved filling it out.
I mentioned in a post yesterday, that if you want to know exactly what position Democrat Party officials take on any issue, one must understand that it is nearly always the opposite of what he or she says it is.
For example, by party, Liberal Democrats profess themselves to be free speech loving, compassionate, caring, and patriotic Americans. Yet, they demonize those who carry differing opinions , they “compassionately” believe in a woman’s choice to brutally murder their umborn. Their definition of “caring” means that they strive to place segments of our society in a state of total dependence (welfare and federally paid social programs) and slavery. Their “patriotism” is displayed by callously attacking our service members, and any Republican leader whose views or proposals are in direct opposition to their own.
Add to their agenda their “undying” quest for the truth. For them, truth is in the eye of the beholder, and is subject to endless parsing of words. Another tenet of their party is “tolerance,” yet they do not show that aspect of humanity when dealing with religious, cultural, or political opposition.
The one thing they religiously embrace is “diversity.” They claim that this country was founded on diversity, but that is, once again, not true. This great country of ours was founded on UNITY, not diversity! Diversity is another one of those words that liberals love to parse. They want it to represent uniqueness, when in fact, diversity means DIVISION.
Remember the old military doctrine of “Divide and Conquer?”
A few years back I worked for a mortgage company doing security work - not anything to do with mortgages. I would say that for almost 2 years, the only mortgages (both new and refi’s) were done for Mexican immigrants. Some were legal but most were not. The mortgage company would not always verify income. They would often accept a handwritten letter from the employer saying the person made so much money. Since these were not always on company stationery, I believe that most were false documents provided by anyone who could write in English. Since all the mortgages were sold immediately to another company, the one I was working for made a ton of money. I am sure that most of these are the types that are now causing the problems. I know that many companies in the area were also doing the same thing.
I know something has to be done to fix the economy, but I don’t think taxpayers should be forced to subsidize and let these companies make even more money after they screwed up. It is time for everyone, the companies and the people getting a loan to start facing responsibility.
Is there ANY possibility of ANY of the liberals admitting that their diversity programs have been failures?
Yes- I know the answer. They didn’t go far enough, right?
30 feet from where I am sitting, there is an office where a company (now gone), was doing exactly this. If my senator or representative or the FBI or Justice Department wants to investigate it, they can. They won’t. In the future when historians look for a date when the the American dream died and the average American stopped believing, they can point to the day the corrupt congress passed the $700 billion bailout and rewarded the criminals and illegals at the expense of the innocents.
Oh my. Hans Bader went there. He’s not allowed to talk about it, though.
In other words, political elites playing the “race card” got us into this mess. How much do you want to bet that history is going to repeat itself because our politicians will refuse to learn the obvious lesson from this crisis?